Yesterday Ruth Tidmarsh and Karina Townsend came over to rehearse vocals, bass and melodica for Saturday's gig at The Betsey Trotwood. Part of the rehearsal was just catching up with each other, which was a really good way to rehearse. If you're going to harmonise vocally you need to know the person you're going to be singing with, and Ruth and Karina hadn't met before although they have a lot in common.
Their voices blend together beautifully. There will be a lot of other musical stuff going on during the songs on Saturday, which made the rehearsal something of a treasure-chest of an experience. There was something timeless about the whole afternoon: three women sitting singing together in a kitchen (with an obtrusive cooker that's waiting to be taken away and recycled, and that's too heavy to push back where it's supposed to be). Calmly, we went through the songs, ate a bit of food, drank a lot of coffee, and had the sort of afternoon that can never be replicated. It was a bubble of beautiful sound, listening while singing, singing while listening, facing each other and working it all out. I can tell you that their voices sound gorgeous together; as experienced musicians they know how to blend and find a timbre that works with the other. I felt honoured to spend the afternoon with such musically intelligent women; it was a 'thing' in itself, almost like going to an art gallery and being blown away by the work of an artist you've never heard about before.
Incidentally, we discovered that the three of us learn out parts in entirely different ways. That's the great thing about music: it gives itself to people in ways that they can personalise and mould to their own ways of being creative.
The rehearsal recordings sound well, awesome. Very few people will hear them, I suspect, but different incarnations of Saturday's line-up will appear over the next few months (as well as the solo shows), and whenever I can practically do it, I'll augment the gigs this year with people who've contributed to the album.
